Abstract

Writing is a critical literacy skill that emerges in kindergarten. The research literature has only addressed transcription skills of kindergarteners and has failed to address text generation. The purpose of this action-research study was to investigate the effect of oral language instruction that focused on narrative text structures on kindergarten students’ ability to generate written narrative text. We conducted a concurrent multiple baseline design across three groups of students with two participants in each group. Students received six instructional sessions that involved the teacher modeling a story and supporting the students while they retold and generated oral stories. Pictures and icons were used to represent story grammar elements, but were faded within session to facilitate independent storytelling. The oral language instruction had an immediate positive effect on the narrative quality of students’ writing. Individual and overall effects were significant and maintained three to four weeks later. Findings suggest an efficient causal relation between oral language instruction and writing quality.

摘要

写作是幼儿园中出现的一项重要的识字技能。研究文献仅涉及幼儿园儿童的转录技能，未能解决文本生成问题。这项行动研究的目的是调查以叙事文本结构为重点的口语教学对幼儿园学生生成书面叙事文本能力的影响。我们对三组学生进行了并发多基线设计，每组有两名参与者。学生们接受了六节教学课程，其中包括教师为故事建模并在学生复述和创作口头故事时为他们提供支持。图片和图标用于表示故事语法元素，但在会话中褪色以促进独立讲故事。口语教学对学生写作的叙事质量有直接的积极影响。个人和整体效果显着，并在三到四个星期后保持。研究结果表明口语教学和写作质量之间存在有效的因果关系。